You are preaching to the choir, son, the choir. We have been carping about this for years. What you have to do is find a friendly shop owner who is willing to ship to Texas. I know one for sure if you want to e-mail me. Used him a lot when I was in San Antonio and Tulsa.

Hi T and welcome to the real world of lobbies.....in this case a coalition of MADD,SADD, the wholesalers, your friendly Baptist churches, and the legilators who receive the largess from these divergent groups. We're working our patooties off here in Phoenix to overcome this unconstitutional travesty. You should join the national orginization, Free The Grapes (www.freethegrapes.org.) as should every member of this board. Only thru concerted and unified action can these unjust,stupid,inhibiting laws be thrown off the books. Hi Curmy, this posts' fer' youse. WW

Short of leaving Texas, you have only the sage wisdom of winoweenie to guide you in this matter--this will be a long fight until the Supreme Court is petitioned, hears the case and decides the conflict in our Constitution needs to be rectified.

The wholesalers are plainly behind keeping this issue status-quo; they are among the few government-protected industries in the U.S., and they plan to keep it that way.

Hi txkajun. The reason the wholesalers are against direct shipping is the fact they perceive they'll lose a few sales. Even tho they don't carry Bell, Cakebread or many of the hundreds of small great suppliers, they want to make sure we don't get the chance to buy from them as it MIGHT cost them a bottle or two. Their main argument is that with direct shipping there'd be no control on who orders the wine. I know my teen-aged grand-son is going to order a 20 buck bottle of wine, wait 1 to 2 weeks for delivery, then have a party. What a crock!!!! If it takes more than 15 minutes to get a fake ID, a 6-pack for 4.99, my GC's will swipe one out of their parents stash. There has NEVER been a case where wine was delivered to a minor that was not orchestrated by one of the adversaries. Hope you get the nasty picture. WW

Drew, if I read that correctly, I hate it. It is not direct shipping. Did you catch the line where producers wanting to ship the wine have to apply for a Pennsylvania license? Right there the bill defeats itself, not to mention the additional costs involved in having the wine "cleared" through a PA retail outlet.

This is just another control bill and has nothing to do with free access to commerce across state lines. Man, when the government has a tax interest you simply cannot undo the grip.